City of Derry Airport endorses report on scrapping of air passenger duty

CoDA fully support that people in Northern Ireland rely on air travel for “family and economic life” and that it is essential to “facilitate the rebalancing of the Northern Ireland economy”.

The Report, ‘An Air Transport Strategy for Northern Ireland’, produced by the House of Commons Northern Ireland Affairs Committee reinforces what CoDA, and other airports within Northern Ireland, have been saying for the past three years; APD acts as an artificial barrier to developing both leisure and business routes and is hindering potential future growth. Something needs to be done to level the playing field with our competitors and act as a catalyst to stimulate aviation growth – in turn this will ultimately lead to the creation of new jobs, increased tourism and will drive overall economic growth.

Airport Director, Damien Tierney said: “APD charged in the UK is already the highest in the world and is up to 8.5 times more than the European average. For example, Air Travel Tax [Ireland’s APD equivalent] is charged at a flat rate of €3 per departing passenger, whereas the UK domestic rate is £13 per departing passenger, 400% higher. We believe this creates an unfair market situation and is inhibiting our ability to attract new carriers and routes to the North West region, especially with Derry being the host city for the 2013 UK City of Culture.

The UK Government, with strong support from the Northern Irish Assembly, has already taken the first steps of reversing this anti-growth tax by significantly reducing APD for direct long haul routes from Northern Ireland. What we now need is the next step to reduce, or ultimately abolish, APD on short-haul routes which make up over 85% of the passenger traffic from Northern Ireland.

Overall, traffic in Northern Ireland is down over 10% in the past five years, we need bold and decisive action to reserve this trend and the report released today by the House of Commons Northern Ireland Affairs Committee adds fresh impetus to achieve this.”